


煎熬 | suffering

by virdant



Series: 吃飽了嗎? | Have you eaten your fill? [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Food as a Metaphor for Love, Gen, Jedi, Jedi Culture, Jedi Culture Respected, POV Mace Windu, War is a terrible thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25777582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: In the face of suffering, Mace chooses what compassion he can offer.He is a Jedi, and that means that he is now leading men into battle. He is head of the Order, and that means that he must order his brothers and sisters among the Jedi to battle. He watches his men die, he feels his fellow Jedi blink out in the Force. Every day, he sits and churns and there is so much death in the galaxy now that it feels as though it is straining at the edges, about to shatter.
Relationships: Mace Windu & Clone Troopers, Mace Windu & Jedi Children
Series: 吃飽了嗎? | Have you eaten your fill? [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832875
Comments: 29
Kudos: 211
Collections: Best Fics, Jedi-Friendly





	煎熬 | suffering

**Author's Note:**

> i sat on this one-shot for like, 2 and a half weeks but you know, at some point, you have to just send it off into the wild regardless of your mixed feelings. 
> 
> i knew i was going to write a story titled suffering about 2 fics into this food series but for a while i thought it would be an obi-wan fic but y'know, why restrict suffering to just obi-wan when every jedi was suffering in the war? have some mace fic. enjoy.
> 
> 煎熬 - jian ao, suffering. from the characters 煎, to pan-fry and 熬, to boil/simmer.

Every day, Mace is faced with the dilemma of sending his people to die.

He is a Jedi, and that means that he is now leading men into battle. He is head of the Order, and that means that he must order his brothers and sisters among the Jedi to battle. He watches his men die, he feels his fellow Jedi blink out in the Force. Every day, he sits and churns and there is so much death in the galaxy now that it feels as though it is straining at the edges, about to shatter.

There is so much death, and he wants, desperately, for the war to end.

It does not end. The war drags on and on, an unending boil that scalds at the edges of his soul. Each death sears deep wounds into him. He watches his people fall, one after another. They fall, they fall, and they do not get up.

But he is a Jedi. He is head of the Order. 

He gets up.

* * *

Mace eats every meal with the troops.

There’s a Mess Hall for officers, but Mace prefers the regular Mess. He surrounds himself with his men. He fights with them. He eats with them. They share the same face, but all of them shine so brightly in the Force, distinct shatterpoints surrounding each of them. His eyes burn when he looks at them. It is a reminder for him, that his men are at the front of change. 

The war drags on and on, and his men continue to fight, enduring. One campaign after another; they march and fight. They recite the names of the dead, and Mace lets his mouth follow the shape of the syllables. Every day grinds by.

When he’s at the Temple, Mace eats in the commissary with the initiates and the knights and masters who aren’t at the front. There are so few of them in the Temple now. There are so many troops fighting in a war. He sits among his people: the knights and masters on leave at the temple, the initiates too young to fight in wars, the padawans separated from their masters. He sits among his people: the troops he must send into battle, the Jedi who could die any day.

He cannot stop this war, cannot stop them from fighting. His hands are tied, and every bite he eats tastes like ash. There are so many that he cannot save. So many that he loses. But he shares every meal with the men he sends to battle, with the Jedi he must order to fight in a war. He can see his people fed, and he can give them the comfort of a belly full of food.

It is a paltry thing, but he gives.

* * *

In a simpler time, he shared meals in his quarters. He cooked food from his home planet of Haruun Kal and shared it with his friends. He saw his padawan fed, watched her grow. He sank into the Light and let it fill him.

But it is no longer a simpler time.

The galaxy is dark, and the war rages on. Every death stings like a sear against his soul. Every battle simmers with agony. He is leading men to die. He is commanding his family to die.

Mace is not the only one losing his appetite. Every Jedi he meets is shadowed. He sits with Obi-Wan as they very slowly force rations down their throat. He sits with Kit Fisto as they eat the bland meals that meet all of their nutritional requirements. He joins the knights and the masters, sits with them and eats with them. Every chance he can get, he sees his family fed. They eat better, in his presence, with another jedi by them. He eats better, seeing them fed. 

He has not served in kitchen duty for years now, but he remembers: ladling soups, scooping rice into bowls, sliding platters of meat and vegetables to Jedi as they pass through the commissary with hollow eyes and exhausted hearts. He remembers how the lines of their future shift, crackle, and disappear with the warmth of a good meal. 

He is not cooking; he is not cleaning. He is at war, now, but he will eat every meal with his men, if only to provide what comfort he can.

* * *

He is in the Temple, and the initiates are making dumplings.

Mace goes to the creche and sits with them. He lets the initiates put dumpling wrappers in his palms, sits with his knees pressed against the too-small table, pinches meat and vegetable filling into the center, and folds.

But even in the creche, the war whispers. There are initiates that should be padawans, but there are not enough knights. There are initiates who only see the war-worn returning to rest. 

They are children. Mace bends over and folds in the neat precise folds he learned when he, too, was an initiate. He helps a little Togruta, her montrals small nubs still, teaching her how hard to press the folds. It is her first time folding, she says, brightly. She used to help make wrappers, but Bes is much better at rolling them out—doesn’t rip as many from trying to get them thin and round, so this time she gets to help fold. But her dumplings are squashy and lopsided.

Mace says, “Not so much filling.” He shows her how much to add, cradling a dumpling in the palm of the hand. “Just enough.” He pinches the ends into a crescent moon, sets it on the platter to join the others.

They have already made so many dumplings, together, hands working in unison. Mace bends his head to make another.

“Can you do the other types of folds?”

He can. Any Master who spends any amount of time in the creche learns more than the most basic folding patterns taught to the younglings. Mace, as Master of the Order, has been temple-bound for years. He’s learned plenty of patterns. He does a fishtail pattern for the Togruta. He does a flower pattern. He teaches the initiates that gather around him, and the oldest ones—the ones who should be padawans already—attempt to copy him with varying successes.

He folds until his knees ache and his fingers feel tired. It’s not enough. Nothing is enough, with the war.

They fry panfry the dumplings to make potstickers. They boil the dumplings and serve them with dipping sauces. The air is filled with the smell of cooking.

He eats with the initiates. He brings platters of dumplings out to the commissary with the rest of the initiates for the knights and masters to share. 

The little Togruta comes up to him as he’s getting ready to leave. She has a package in her hands. It’s a package of dumplings that they made today.

“Will you give them to the soldiers keeping us safe?” she asks.

Mace closes his eyes and takes the package. “Of course,” he promises.

He thinks about the day the war ends, and the chance to teach all of the men under his command how to fold dumplings.

* * *

He eats every meal he can with his men.

They did not ask to be born. They did not ask to fight in a war. They are soldiers, through no choice of their own, and Mace is helpless. He watches his men fight, he watches them die, he watches their lives slip through his fingers and he can do nothing.

So he spends his time with them. Eats with them. Sears their names into his heart. He will give them the comfort he can, even if that comfort is merely a body to share a meal with. He thinks of the meals at the Temple, thinks of initiates with their chubby fingers folding dumplings. He does not fold dumplings with his men, caught as they are between battles and battles. He thinks of hotpot with Master Yoda and the other council members, in those years before the war, the warmth of luminous beings in the light.

When he looks into the future, all he sees are shatterpoints. He can see them ready to break. He feels himself on the precipice of shattering.

He does not shatter.

He gets up. He sends his men to battle. He orders his brothers and sisters to die. The galaxy boils and boils as the war rages on and on, and all he can see are shatterpoints.

He cannot keep them from breaking, but he can see to it that they are fed, before they do.

**Author's Note:**

> it's been weeks since i posted a one-shot so i [polled my twitter pals](https://twitter.com/virdant/status/1291690026057609216) and the (3) people spoke and the winner was this fic i hope you all enjoyed. if you didn't, then you may blame the (2) people who voted for me to post this fic as i followed their whims. as a reminder, i have a chaos twitter where i yell about star wars and words at 3am because i'm entirely nocturnal at this point. come yell about star wars with me or just, idk, vote in my sporadic polls where i ask people to choose what i'm going to post next. 
> 
> thanks for reading, i hope you all enjoyed, stay safe and eat some good food. ❤️
> 
> check out [this beautiful art by aliche/adinavdeb!](https://adinavdeb.tumblr.com/post/630022107111342081/mace-showing-a-youngling-how-to-make-dumplings)
> 
>   * Follow me on twitter [@virdant](http://virdant.twitter.com)
>   * [Like & retweet on twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant/status/1291935888054743041)
>   * Comment and kudo below
> 


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lessons of Peace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26559805) by [virdant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant)




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